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Programming languages take center stage in this Dr. Dobb's Journal. Explore the most interesting features in the new Ada 2012 standard; understand the philosophy behind Clojure; look at the major update to NetRexx; and take a tour through Fantom, a language that generates JavaScript and binaries for .NET and the JVM.

In This April Digital Issue:

Table of Contents

Ada 2012: Ada With ContractsBy Robert Dewar

The most important new feature in Ada 2012 is support for contract-based programming, which adds more validation to a language already famous for its focus on reliability.

The Clojure PhilosophyBy Michael Fogus and Chris Houser

Clojure, a modern implementation of Lisp, has blossomed into an important programming language for the JVM. Its elegant implementation heralds the emergence of functional languages on mainstream platforms.

NetRexx: The Original JVM Scripting Language ReturnsBy René Jansen

The first scripting language for the JVM was recently open-sourced by IBM. After a major update, it is gaining traction by leveraging its novel design.

FROM THE VAULT

FantomBy Brian Frank

Fantom is a language with a very clean implementation: elegant APIs, message-passing is the default parallel, static and dynamic typing, and so on. But its most notable feature might be that it generates bytecodes for the JVM and the .NET CLR or, if you prefer, it can output JavaScript.

LETTERSBy you

Readers comment on C, logging, and bad programmers.

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